Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Because everyone loves a haunted cornfield, I present this story from the (Bowling Green, Ohio) "Daily Sentinel Tribune," November 8, 1904:

The "ghost" in the large cornfield on the Stephen Laskey farm, northwest of Rudolph, still prospers and is the cause of much wondering on the part of many residents of the village and surrounding country.

The cries which resemble the wails of a babe are still heard in the field as many residents of this village will testify. Cap. Nelson is given as a reference, but he says he has not visited the scene of the weird doings but will do so soon with the expectation of seeing and hearing something. 

A number of explanations of the mystery are offered but none have been found as yet which seem to exactly hit the point. Despite the speculation the wails continue to rise from the ground and the neighbors continue to be mystified or scared according to their temperaments.

One story has it that the noises are the cries of some wild beast which was discovered in the same territory about six years ago. It was hunted and wounded by a farmer with a shotgun after creating the same kind of excitement at that time. The animal, beast, or wild man was shot during the night and clots of blood were discovered around the next day. 

A gruesome murder of forty years ago is recalled by some of the older residents and the more superstitious explain the phenomenon of the present day as the wails of the murdered man’s ghost complaining of the treatment he received. 

About forty years ago, when the farm was owned by another party, an old peddler reached the place late one evening and seeing a light in the old house went to it and sought shelter for the night. He was invited in and made comfortable. The peddler never left the premises, so the narrator says, and that later the body was discovered in an old well which was located near a tree. This well has been filled in and the exact location is not known though it is thought that the stump where the sounds were heard last week by Hon. P. Reigle and others is the remains of a large tree that stood very near this old well.  Furthermore, the story goes on saying that one of the laborers was a witness of the deed and that his mind was effected and that he has never recovered from the shock. This man was about seven years of age at the time of the disappearance of the peddler.  From this story one can draw their own conclusions and if superstitious the reader will at once be convinced that the old peddler has just thought that it was about time to make some complaint about the ill treatment that he received some years ago.

Some have pronounced the story a fake and the dream of a deluded reporter but be that as it may, hundreds have visited the premises and returned from the scene convinced that the thing is as real as can be. It can not be denied that many of the county’s most reliable citizens have gone, listened, heard, and searched then gave it up and went home without solving the mystery. About half of the village of Rudolph have visited the Laskey farm in the last three days and the other half is going.